Gilded Silver
by Reapergal08
Summary: All she wanted was to follow her dreams; instead she found the gutters of New York city. But the only way from the bottom is up and a helping hand offers a way to the stars. Anthropomorphic Gilbird. 20s!verse one shot. Use of sensitive themes and issues. Side story to The Duty of An Elder Son.


**This is a fic based on the relationship between Prussia/Gilbert and Birdie in A Duty of An Elder Son (also my story, an AU based in the 20s in America) Birdie is the anthropomorphic character of Gilbird and is a mute. This is her story and how they meet and why she is with him in the main plot line. Time line wise for Duty of An Elder Son (which takes place in 1925), this story is set between 1914-1921 (1921 being when she meets Gilbert) so a few years before they meet the others. For those who have read it, Gilbert has not yet met Antonio. He has only just started work for Ivan (and that's all you need to know ;).) **

**Readers of Duty of An Elder Son, keep an eye out for spoilers and the ship ;) and all readers try to guess the identity of the other characters yeah? They all have one when I wrote the story (here's a hint: none are human). ****I am so sorry for everyone who follows me that thought this might be a Duty of an Elder Son update, although it technically IS. Some of you might have been reading my author's notes at the beginning/end of my chapters saying I was considering doing a few one shots in the universe of the original 20s fiction. Welcome to the first one of many(?) These will be able to be read alone as single stories or as part of the series: the 20s!verse! :D I have a lot of back stories and ideas for this verse that I fear will spiral waaaay out of control...**  


**Some sensitive themes in this one, just as a warning. Implications of a lot of dark themes and swearing later on. And some 'ideas' of life are old fashioned and not ones I share.  
**

**Hetalia does not belong to me. Anthropomorphic characters are based on the original animal bases so technically are also not mine.**

oOo

_'Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.'- Coco Channel_

oOo

Bridget Dean had always been in love with the stars.

It had started off as a simple fascination with the heavens. One Christmas when she was six, her father had bought her a beautifully illustrated book that showed in detail where all the constellations were to be found in the night sky. She had spent hours pouring over its pages religiously, often with her father at her shoulder aiding her in her lessons, puffing on an old pipe and his jumpers smelling of the rich tobacco where she rested her head. He was a kind man, and well educated, he took it upon himself to teach his damaged daughter English even though she would never be able to speak it aloud. Her mother had said he was wasting his time and merely prayed that one day a man would lower himself to marry a girl such as Bridget; in comparison to her husband Bridget's mother was a cruel woman, bitter at the dice the fates had cast her when giving her a mute child and taking the ability to conceive another. Her father was often frustrated with her for such comments, and would lavish Bridget with small gifts as if to apologise for her mother's attitude towards her, hence the lavish book for Christmas. She treasured it. Stargazing was a simple pastime, one that would not require her to communicate with anyone, and she loved it. She would spend all night looking skyward and listening to the silence of the sky from her small home in the heart of France, wondering how all the diamonds had managed to scatter themselves across the inky blackness in such perfect formations. Lions, horses, heroes. Bridget would often dream of those stars, their glittering, shimmering forms following her into the land of sleep and beyond. They were the beautiful sentinels of the skies, her silent shining companions that needed no conversation which she would never be able to offer.

Her time amongst them however was short lived. Bridget had been born before the war, and as it had progressed she had only been a small child. For her, the start of the war was a hazy memory, it never quite seemed to reach her lazy little village apart from the times of mourning women in black and tears on the street at the discovery of more death on a distant muddy patch of battered ground. She shed tears for the men she could recall, the nicer ones who had called her a pretty little thing and gave her sweets outside the bakery with a tip of the hat and a wink. But after the sadness they were a forgotten memory, obscured by the memories of innocence and childhood.

But then with a letter given by a solemn hand, her father was ripped from her. Missing in action, dead, they meant the same brutal truth and there was no longer time for the sky or the stars. No night time lessons or the smell of tobacco, Bridget was left alone with her brutish mother. Her cruel words and harsh truths pushed imagination and fantasy from her mind. In the real world there was no place for such an attitude. Bridget's mother was eager to enter her into society and away from roaming the fields surrounding their house alone. Eager to marry her off and remove at last the one annoyance remaining in her life. When the war ended in 1919 Bridget was relieved because it meant she would no longer be trapped in her small village and could finally, at the age of fifteen be sent away to Paris where the bright lights of the city wiped the sky into a dull orange and there were no more lights in the heavens: there, they walked the streets.

The capital was alive, slowly unfurling the bandages of war from its buildings to throw them into the air in celebration as the city was reconstructed from the ashes like a phoenix. An energetic yet painfully restless vibe filled Paris, from the very stones of the street to the air the Eiffel Tower scraped with its lofty point. It was as if the war had left the inhabitants confused and disorientated, forever living in a cloud of disarray; now the battles were over and done the remaining energy had to find another outlet. Fashion, music, the arts, they thrived in the turmoil allowing the people to truly live after five years of death and destruction. Bridget was more than aware of the political troubles that drifted past her from the mouths of the gentlemen which she passed on the street, but like the rest of the city she drowned herself in the new age. Like the mist of the orient, the change in the times mesmerised the city's inhabitants; men wore combinations never seen before the war and the women were liberated from their dank corsets and sitting rooms to blossom on the streets, their short hair and risqué outfits thrilling Bridget more than she could have imagined. She too cut her hair short and maintained her image with make-up, attracting more than her fair share of male attention. But she never fell in love, not then; she was too young and adrift the tide of the age to see the attention for what it was and worked as though none of it mattered. There her days were spent working in the store of her older, and more successful cousin, who designed and made his own fashion wares. Pierre was a kind man and understood her plight better than the other workers he employed,women who spoke to her slowly, as if the fact that she could not speak made it so that she could not understand. Her father had always told her that actions spoke louder than words so Bridget paid the other women little heed, and worked as diligently as she was able, silently aiding in the background.

One day Pierre found he needed a hand passing over a large order to a fashion shoot further up town, and he allowed Bridget to accompany him. It was there, in the large dazzling studio full of the smell of make-up and hair products that choked the air, that Bridget found her new stars.

Looking at the beautiful women, dressed in their finest to be immortalised on film, Bridget found herself in awe of these women. They didn't need to speak to show their words, they held them in their hands, around their necks, in their clothes. The world was at their feet with a flash of the camera and a glossy look towards the sky. Bridget now found new stars to follow, and a new dream. There could have been nothing more she wanted than to follow these people to the ends of the earth, just to languish in their shadows, to clothe them, to style them.

But to do that she would have to go across the ocean to America where everyone knew the true fashion world thrived; of course, her minute wage was not enough to take her there. And in the ocean she saw her dreams crash.

Then one night, while haunting one of the bars that the models often visited, as she sat in a gloomy corner nursing a drink she could barely afford and did not enjoy while waiting to glimpse her constellations, she met Mr Finn. The man swooped down on her bar, emerging through the cigarette smoke with a grin and a pristine coat with tails; her instincts told her straight away he was a lowlife of the highest degree. He made her skin crawl, the way his beady dark eyes watched her hungrily right down to the way his fat, repulsive body waddled when he walked. But when he spoke he held in his hands a life line that Bridget could not allow herself to refuse. _It was his 'business', _he simpered_, to allow young women like her to cross the Atlantic and work amongst the beautiful models and film stars, and for someone like herself who had no other merits it was a perfect opportunity_. She took it readily, agreed to his contract, packed up her limited, shabby belongings and with a group of other girls, made her way across the ocean.

Her first sights of America were from a small island where they asked her questions and poked and prodded her rudely. Luckily, she knew English and after they had stopped yelling at her to answer them and realised she was mute, she was able to communicate well enough to pass through. Some of the other girls were not so fortunate, or perhaps in a twist of fate they were. She and a handful of the other girls were allowed from the island and onto the streets which were surging and wild, hundreds of miles away from the calmer streets of her homely village, even the streets of Paris themselves. Everything was that touch louder, that hint more darker. There was no golden road like Bridget had imagined, no silver lining on the clouds. They had been deceived. It was grey and dull and men were starving on the streets. The city stank from the masses of people and the oil from the cars that thundered down the road, splashing pedestrians with little consideration and covering them in the grimy water of the streets. Mr Finn met them with a bright smile and opened his arms wide, leaving them nowhere else to run to but to him.

One thing was certain: in America there were no stars.

Mr Finn was everything he had seemed on that first meeting, with all her hope stripped away Bridget could see him for what he truly was. He did not have links to the world of fashion, he did not plan to get his girls into fame. She had been lured in with his lies and with her head in the clouds she had believed everything he had spun. No, his plans for them were much worse and none of them could escape, trapped hundreds of miles from home with no money. Bridget was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and in the end she chose to cling to the rock for dear life without consideration of what she would find at the top of it. What she found were men, eager to spend a night with a woman for a fee she only ever saw a small fraction of. It was filthy and wrong, but it was food and a roof over her head. It was the only way to survive. She was one of the lucky ones. Some of the girls had cried when they found out, screamed and demanded to be free. Bridget had not seen them since, and they certainly had not got what they wanted. Why would they leave behind their belongings if they did? And why would Mr Finn order them to be burnt? No, she accepted her fate quietly, with only her heart screaming the words she could not form.

oOo

Bridget had been told to be at the diner late and it was already dark when she checked slyly through the window to see if any men from the street were heading towards the building with a purpose. For now there was none, the street all but empty and the ones that did pass did not look towards the brightly lit shop front: he was late. She sat alone with her legs snapped tight together under her large coat that covered up her body properly, unlike the silk dress hiding beneath. Her make-up was too dark for her tastes as always and she bit her red painted lips nervously as she glanced around the diner. It was generic in design and shabby looking, most of the surfaces within sight covered in a tacky, chipping chrome that showed the browning metal beneath. It was clean at least, Bridget thanked; she did not enjoy waiting in dirty places for the johns, and much preferred to be warm and comfortable. The dinner itself was pretty much dead, her only company being a petite blond waitress who wiped down the mess from the next table and a young couple in the corner who were sloppily making out and touching each other crudely. Bridget watched them in morbid fascination, eyeing curiously the woman's putrid green coat and the man's shining bald head. Under the harsh light it was hard not to see everything, and it was so quiet she could hear each shaking breath and moan, accompanied by the inconsistent screech of the leather on the seats. She faintly wondered whether or not they were together, or if it mattered at all. The waitress tutted loudly at the sight, turning her nose up daintily and retreated behind the bar out of the way with a shake of her hips. Bridget stared down at her tea she had yet to sip and thought with no little sense of irony how the prim waitress would take to her if she understood what she was doing there.

It was one of the reasons she hated waiting for clients. It was better to slip in and out of a place and most men were eager to please and dragged her away. Others made her wait, trying to find time away from their real lovers no doubt, and after a while a girl on her own, dressed as she was attracted stares. Bridget was accustomed to their looks by now, but they still made her feel sick, their judging eyes shooting straight through her and seeing the horrid truth. It was the same every time, she would meet the gentleman in his place of choice, be taken to his home, or nearby hotel and there- she shivered inwardly. It was a job she reminded herself, one that she could not run from. Mr Finn always collected his payment in advance on the condition that one of his girls would be there for the man to pick up and take away like a human shipment of meat to do with what he would. And he was never far away in case anything would happen to one of his precious girls that would mean more money for him.

Perhaps that was why when the man walked into the diner she felt nothing but a slight sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach. The door chimed open, far to cheerily for the situation, and she snapped her head up to look at the approaching figure with a numb knot of trepidation forming in her gut. The man was not one of her regulars and she had never seen him with one of the other girls. He was a thin guy, and especially pale in the harsh lighting of the diner, his hair almost white in appearance. At first glance she thought he was old, it would not have been a first to have someone old enough to be her father as a customer, but his face when he turned searching for her was smooth and line free. His surprisingly dark eyes honed in on her, sat alone in the demanded spot on the furthest booth from the left, and he made his awkward way forward. His walk was as angular as his sharp black suit and his high boned face was actually handsome; what a good-looking man like him needed in a girl like her she did not know.

Bridget made to stand up as the customer closed in, most of them were eager to start and get their money's worth but this one waved her down.

"No, no, sweetheart, you take a seat." He said, sliding into the booth across from her. He had a slight accent that seemed European, and the homely familiarity of it filled her with surprising warmth over her nervousness. "I want to have a little chat with you."

Well that was certainly unusual. Mr Finn had been thrilled to find out that she was a mute, it was apparently good for business to have a quiet girl, one who could stare up at the men and plead with their eyes and talk more with their bodies rather than their mouths. She was not prided on her ability for conversation and there was always an awkward moment when one of the men tried to converse with her in a distinctly guilty manner, although those were few and far between. Warily she lowered herself back into the seat, placing her bag on the table before her like a shield.

The blond appraised her, his dark eyes travelling over her shyly. He tacked on a sly wink at the end but he seemed as nervous as her. Probably his first time doing this sort of thing.

"You're a pretty one," He commented pleasantly, his voice shaking a little. His hand, which rested on the table before him, had yet to be still and tapped out a quick rhythm onto the chrome. "I can see why Mr Finn hired you. My name is Gilbert."

He thrust forward his other hand. Bridget stared at it unsure for a long moment, the men never said their names in case anything ever happened. Nameless faces were what she was certain of but this man either didn't mind being known, or didn't quite understand the business he was dealing in. With his nervous air it was most likely the latter. New men were always difficult to deal with. She took his hand and gave it a brief, hesitant shake before snapping her hand back under the table. Gilbert sighed slightly and raised an eyebrow in her direction, his lips twitching up at the corners. There was something about his eyes that made Bridget stare openly, even though she wanted to turn her head away.

"So with that over now it's your turn." He said, and her heart jumped. Finally they would be doing what she was paid to do. She dreaded to think what Mr Finn would do to her if he knew she was not doing her job, but then Gilbert burst her bubble. "What's your name, sweet?"

Bridget stared at him as if to check that he was joking: he wasn't. His eyes were clear and curious, with a hint of something she had sensed before hovering beneath the surface. She did not question it and shook her head roughly, and wordlessly. He cocked his head to the side, confusion beating his fear for the moment.

"It's just a name." He stated, clearly confused and slightly offended by his tone. Oh no, she was not meant to offend the customers. With suddenly shaking hands she hurried to unclasp her bag, watched under Gilbert's eyes. "If you don't want to tell me it's fine, I just thought-"

He stopped as she pulled out a tatty notepad and pen, and quickly flipped onto a clean page. She made sure to carry her pad around with her in case the need arose to speak to someone. Her heart pounded as she scribbled her name with a shaking hand. She felt suddenly more than a little rebellious. Bridget should not have be conversing with the customer or giving them her details but part of her didn't care. She had nothing else, and her name did not yet belong to Mr Finn, it was hers to give to whoever she chose even if it was this strange young man with the alluring eyes who didn't seem to quite know what he was doing.

She slid the pad of paper across to him. Gilbert read it, then looked back up at her confused, clearly stuck by how she had wrote it rather than speaking it when she snatched it back.

_I'm mute_, Bridget added to the line below with a shaking hand and once more passed it over. This time Gilbert's eyes widened and he stared openly at her, a thin line of worry forming on his forehead. He seemed for a long moment unable to speak, then he swallowed and his whole demeanour changed. He was no longer relaxed but tense, his shoulders sitting far too straight as he avoided her gaze.

"Well, that changes things." He mumbled, half to himself. Bridget flinched back, he was repulsed by her? It wouldn't have been the first time but it didn't stop it hurting any less.

But Gilbert seemed to be struggling with himself internally. He spoke so low it was difficult to catch what he was saying. "Damn it, falling at the first hurdle. Such a sucker for a sob story. This is why old big nose didn't want to hire me. How unawesome."

Bridget had no idea what the man was on about, but he was clearly here for another purpose rather than her body. Her initial reaction was to walk out, Mr Finn would not want her to waste time when she could be put with another john before the end of the night; but her next reaction was curiosity. Why would a man pay to be with her and then not demand what he had paid for? Sure, he looked more than a little nervous with his now sweating brow and still tapping fingers, but there was something else she felt he wanted from her and Bridget was determined to find out.

He must have felt her gaze on him because he blushed and looked up at her apologetically, his pale cheeks blushing pink. But then he coughed and squared his shoulders, straightening up.

"Listen." Gilbert started firmly, obviously attempting to sound a lot more stern than he felt. To add to the effect he banged his still quivering hand onto the table top, Bridget could only stare and wonder how to react to all of this. "My boss wants you to come with me. He has a proposition for you, he wants to have sex with you."

Gilbert's face blanched as Bridget's eyes widened in shock. The man seemed mortified by his apparent mistake.

"No wait, that was wrong. Fuck, why did boss want me to do this?" He forced his head into his hands, his face colouring even more. "Shooting people? I can do that. Torture? Check. Take hostages? Shit, got two guys in my trunk I forgot about. Damn. But fuck it, this is not what I signed up for. He should have left this to the others."

Bridget reached for the paper left forgotten in front of them and wrote out a quick message on the white surface.

_What is your boss's name? What does he want from me?_

Gilbert with his face in his hands did not notice the paper, not even when she rammed the pad into his arm. Rolling her eyes a little she whistled sharply. It was one of the only sounds she could make. It did not use her damaged voice box and enabled her to get people's attention when they were far away, over the years she had perfected the loudest and most piercing note she could manage and it was this that made Gilbert look up, his eyes wide.

"I thought you were mute?" He mumbled as she shrugged and passed him the paper. It would have been too difficult to explain. He read the note and opened his mouth to respond but then seemed to change his mind, instead picking up the discarded pen and writing beneath.

It was Bridget's turn to be surprised as he passed her the notepad back, his lips tight together and the blush still adorning his cheeks.

His writing was childlike and messy, but clear enough for her to make out what it said.

_My boss is called Ivan. He lives in Russia right now but he's making his way over in a month or two and he sent me and some of his other men ahead to drum up some business. Mr Finn is an old 'acquaintance'_, she noted the quotations around the word and realised that her boss was probably not his boss's friend in any sort of way, she carried on reading._ I was instructed to persuade some of __his working girls to work for my boss instead while the other guys got other jobs, drugs and shit. Ivan is taking over his late father's business and moving cities and he wants everything sorted before his arrival. Basically little bird, he wants you to work for him rather than your current boss._

Leave Mr Finn? It was impossible, it was dangerous. The man terrified Bridget more than anything she could put into words. She could never go up to him and ask him to let her go to another pimp. It would never happen and it would not be allowed. To consider it was madness, especially taking in the fact that this Ivan was most likely not friendly with Mr Finn, he would never let her go to an enemy.

But then again Ivan was obviously a powerful man to be able to send some of his workers across the world to prepare his business for them. Perhaps working for him could not be as bad as working for Mr Finn? And then there was the young man across from her, the one that had called her 'little bird'. Despite his white hair he could be no older than herself, perhaps in his early twenties. He seemed decent and kind, he lowered himself down to her level and wrote her a note even though he could have told her aloud. No man had ever done that to her before, not since her father. The remembrance threw her a little and she was suddenly aware of Gilbert talking to her again.

"Hey, how old are you?" He seemed awkward once again, but not as much as her previously was now his delicate question was out of the way. Bridget was surprised he did not push her for an immediate answer, instead switching topics to something more neutral. His eyes which were so very dark in his pale face were soft as they watched her. She help up fingers in response. _Seventeen_.

Gilbert hissed, looking horrified as he sat back in his chair. "I have a little brother, just a few years younger than you. God, what are you doing on the streets at your age? You should be at school dreaming of getting married and having kids, not working as a common-"

He stopped himself before he could say the word, his lips fastening together as if glued. Bridget bowed her head in acknowledgement, accepting the words with dignity. She had had a hard life, and she had been a fool. Now she paid with it with her body and her soul. She felt dirty, every time she looked in the mirror she was no longer the girl who she remembered. Her cheeks were make-up stained, rather than sun touched as they had been from days spent running through the French countryside. Her eyes were lifeless and no longer showed the stars at their depths. She was as shell of who she had been, but she was alive and that was all that mattered. She had her lot and she had to live with it.

Bridget took up the paper onto her lap. _I was young and foolish. And what about you? A handsome man like you should be someone a girl like me should be dreaming of marrying, not persuading 'common whores' to sell themselves to yet another man._

Bridget paused before handing it over to him, unsure if she was pushing boundaries with a guy she had just met but she decided not. He was the man who had asked, and she would be damned if she didn't get a response in return. Gilbert's eyes travelled the paper, his mouth relaxing into a sad smile.

"I'm sorry Birdie, it's just my job." Gilbert responded, having the decency to look slightly ashamed as he knotted the nearby pen through his long fingers. She blinked at the choice in nickname and waited for him to continue. "If I had my way I wouldn't be asking any girls to do this. Women should be treated with respect, not as something to get a fix from and drop; but what the boss wants the boss gets."

Gilbert sighed loudly.

"And now he's not going to get any girls for the business, no point trying if I know I can't do it. I refuse to let a nice lady like you be taken in for a job like that. I'll be punished for sure, but screw it. Guess Grandpa was right." His sad eyes found her own and he attempted a sure smile, but it fell painfully short. In one swift movement he had taken up the pen like a sword and scribbled onto her last note, scribbling out the word 'whore' with a relish. The thoughtfulness of the action brought a sense of shock to her, so much so that she felt her mouth open a little.

Gilbert handed her back the paper and pen, touching her hand briefly in passing. "Get out of here little bird, I'll tell Ivan you like your current pimp and have loads of men lined up for business you can't be taken from. It's not a problem."

Bridget surprised herself when her head acted of its own accord and shook violently in disagreement without hesitation. Gilbert half scowled at her in confusion.

"What do you mean no?" He asked. He leant forward slightly over the table, close enough so that Bridget could smell the fine aftershave he wore, light and distinctly male. "Birdie, I don't mean to be funny but perhaps I didn't explain myself clear enough. My boss is a very, very bad man. Much worse than Mr Finn; Ivan isn't no backstreet pimp, he's a mob boss. You'd be less safe with him than anyone else in the world. Word is he wants to start a war with his father's old rival when he gets enough resources together. Why would you want to be part of that shit?"

Bridget was not stupid, she knew where she had it good and easy, but her inner voice was screaming at her to give it a try. Mr Finn might only be a 'backstreet pimp' but he was a foul man. This Ivan had the class to send someone else to do his dirty work.

Besides she was already the bad side of the tracks, what else could go wrong? So she nodded and whistled softly, much to Gilbert's annoyance.

"I'm serious." He grumbled. "The initiation I had to go through with his so called family business could have killed me. I only survived out of sheer luck and determination. Not to blow my own horn but I'm good at surviving."

So was she, hadn't Bridget made it this far on her own? She could make her own choices, and this hell was far more appealing than rotting her life away under Mr Finn, who would eventually get bored of her and get rid of her. At least in a big business like a mob there would be more jobs to do when she turned to old to whore out, right? And just the thought of getting back at the man that had ruined her life made her blood boil in a passion she had not felt in years. She would be a whore yes, but she would not be his whore.

But Gilbert was getting close to desperate now as he tried to persuade her against it. "Look, I can't let you do this. Ivan is a bad man. _I_ am a bad man. I've killed people for him, he clicks his fingers and I do it like the dog I am. Do you really want to be with someone like that?"

Of course she would. Bridget lived in a single room with four other girls. She was forced to wear clothes she hated and dress up like a doll for sex with men she did not know, all for Mr Finn to just feed her. She had been made to give up her dream that she had lived for since her father had died. This man before her might have been a killer as he stated but they were the same, deep down. Both working on the dark side to make their mark on the world that did not care. To scream with wordless mouths that they were there. That they were alive. Most of all the paper before her with the scribble marks on and the poorly written words lay testament to one thing: Gilbert had treated her like a human. And he would be in trouble if he went back alone.

Maybe she was being stupid again and making silly, girl like mistakes, but damn, her life could not get any worse than it was right now. With finality she nodded and Gilbert visibly deflated, looking suddenly weary and tired. He opened his mouth to argue, then shook his head and closed his eyes with a sigh and stood up.

"Come on," he said roughly, throwing down money for her drink even though she did not ask him to and retreating to the door. Bridget stood slowly, suddenly dizzy at the turn of events. Doubt struck her suddenly like a snake bite: was she doing the right thing? What would Mr Finn do when he found out? And then there was Gilbert, who admitted to killing people without batting an eyelid, who she barely knew and she was going to follow him to god knows where, to work for a man she did not know. She caught sight of the man and woman, still too close and making out in the corner. Was that what she wanted to? A cheap thrill? Or did she want to live? The sound of the door bell brought her out of her stupor and made her hurry towards the door on automatic with a clack of heels on tiles, watched closely by the prissy haired waitress who scowled from the back room.

The night air was cold and bit against her. Winter in the big city help none of the seasonal air of the countryside and was always more impersonal than her home village, so clinical and empty. The coat she was wearing might have covered her up so she was decent but it was not warm or thick and she shivered in the wind that blew in around the tall buildings to wrap itself around the couple as they stood in the light of the diner. There was a sound of movement beside her and the next minute a warmth enveloped her. Bridget stared up at the now jacket-less Gilbert, who avoided her gaze, his crisp white collar brushing his red cheeks in the breeze.

"Well, are you coming Birdie?" He asked with a pout, slouching with his angular walk along the pavement, his shoes clipping along the stone at his feet. On the street over the cars honked and roared down the road, the sound reaching them muffled as though they were a world away from everyone else. Gilbert walked until he hit the next street lamp and turned to look at her.

Bridget gasped at how white he appeared, his hair catching the light and shining like a halo around him. He looked almost-

Star like. She froze staring at him, her red lips open slightly at the sight.

"Hurry up, I'm freezing my ass off over here." He called, not noticing the shocked glance she gave him. She had to bury her face into the jacket to hide her smile, soaking up the smell of Gilbert's cologne and a scent that was entirely him, a mixture of smoke and what seemed to be gunpowder. It was warm and familiar and reminded her of nights spent in her room with her father as he taught her lessons by candle light, him speaking in hushed whispers so that her mother would not find out. Perhaps Gilbert had been right, she thought, perhaps he did kill people; Bridget realised she did not care anymore. He was probably just as dangerous as the stars she had followed as a child, and the stars she had attempted to follow to America. All of them burning balls of flame that would swallow her up if she got too close.

Maybe Gilbert would be the end of her, maybe he wouldn't, what was life without a bit of adventure?

She whistled loudly and tottered to him as quickly as she could. He turned away, but not before she could miss the blush that still covered his cheeks, and the slight smile playing on the corner of his lips.

"You know, you look good in that jacket, Birdie. You should wear it all the time."

oOo

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BETA! This was her present she knew all about and has been waiting for xD Got it in on time though! And a few hours early, kapow ;D Thanks for helping me so much my dear and have a great day! Hope I did your ship proud!**

**This all stemmed from a conversation me and my beta had one night about Gilbert and Birdie being sweet together in the mafia story (believe me they've got some scenes later on) and hence a ship was born! Pirdie as we've named it :') personally I think it's adorable but that might be just me.**

**In my head Gilbert is the sort of guy that knows how to treat a woman like a gentleman should. He's bashful and shy because she's a girl he's asking to whore out, it goes against everything he knows. And this is before he's got used to his job in the gang properly, hence double unsure. Awesomeness follows as shown in the main plot. So he is a LITTLE out of character but not much :L**

**I did a lot of research for this story and dug out my brain for my gcse history class on 1920s American immigration etc. All in all, it should be as close as possible but don't take my word for it. I do promise I check things before I write them. And it was checked over a lot but there still might be errors so sorry if there are any, obviously my beta could not edit this!  
**

**So anyway, tell me what you think! And if you liked/disliked etc. Thanks for reading! :)**


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